Retired Green Beret Shoots Intruder, Gets Court Martial
Nods to One Shot on this one, but I can’t seem to track down the original source for the story…it’s a good one, though:
BREVARD, Jan. 19, 2008 – Retired Army Green Beret James T. (Smokey) Taylor got his court martial this weekend and came away feeling pretty good about it.
Taylor, at age 79, is one of the oldest members of Chapter XXXIII (The Larry Thorne Chapter) of the Special Forces Association. He was placed on trial by fellow Chapter XXXIII members under the charge of “failing to use a weapon of sufficient caliber” in the shooting of an intruder at his home in Knoxville, TN, in November.
The court martial, of course, was very much tongue in cheek. The event itself was deadly serious.
Taylor had been awakened in the early morning hours of November 5, 2007,when an intruder broke into his home. He investigated the noises with one of his many weapons in hand.
“It was just after Halloween, on Monday morning at 4:30,” Taylor said. I heard this commotion at the door and grabbed my fishing gun, a little .22 revolver, to see what was going on. I got to the front door and this fellow had ripped my security door out of its frame. He said, ‘you’re going to have to kill me. I’m coming in.’”
When a warning to leave went unheeded, Taylor brought his .22 caliber pistol to bear and shot him right between the eyes.
“I was about four feet away from him when I shot,” Taylor said. “Looking back now, I’m glad he didn’t die, but that boy had the hardest head I’ve ever seen. The bullet bounced right off.”
The impact knocked the would-be thief down momentarily. He crawled out of the house then got up and ran down the street. Taylor dialed 911 and Knoxville police apprehended the wounded man about 200 yards away, hiding in a hedgerow.
Complicating the case, as well as the court martial, the offender was released on bail but failed to appear for his court date. Knoxville police said the man was homeless. They did not know his whereabouts or why he had been given bail.
The charges brought against Taylor by his fellow Green Berets were considered to be serious. He is a retired Special Forces Weapons Sergeant with extensive combat experience during the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
“Charges were brought against him under the premise that he should have saved the county and taxpayers the expense of a trial,” said Chapter XXXIII President Bill Long of Asheville, NC.
The trial was held at the Hampton Inn in Brevard, part of the group’s regularly scheduled quarterly meeting. Long appointed a judge, Bert Bates, a defense counsel, Jim Hash, and a prosecutor, Charlie Ponds. All are retired Special Forces non-commissioned officers with extensive combat and weapons experience.
Ponds outlined the case against Taylor, emphasizing that the citizens of Knox County were going to be burdened with significant costs to again apprehend, and then prosecute and defend the would-be burglar.
“Proper choice of a larger caliber gun would have spared the citizens this financial burden,” Ponds said, “while removing one bad guy from the streets for good. He could have used a .45 or .38. The .22 just wasn’t big enough to get the job done. Hash disagreed. He said Taylor had done the right thing in choosing to arm himself with a 22.
“If he’d used a .45 or something like that the round would have gone right through the perp, the wall, the neighbor’s wall and possibly injured some innocent child asleep in its bed. I believe the evidence shows that Smokey Taylor exercised excellent judgment in his choice of weapons. He clearly remains to this day an excellent weapons man.”
Hash then floated a theory as to why the bullet bounced off the perp’s forehead.
“He was victimized by old ammunition,” he said, “just as he was in Korea and again in Vietnam, when his units were issued ammo left over from World War II.”
Taylor said nothing in his own defense, choosing instead to allow his peers to debate the matter. The jury, consisting of all the members of the Chapter, discussed the merits of choosing a larger caliber weapon as well as the obvious benefits to society of permanently deleting the intruder so he would never again threaten any private citizen.
The other side of the coin, that of accidentally causing injury to a completely innocent citizen if a more powerful gun had been used, also gained considerable support.
Following testimony from both sides, Judge Bates determined the charges should be dismissed. The decision was met with a round of applause. In fact, there was strong sentiment expressed that Taylor should receive an award for not only choosing wisely in picking up the 22, but for the accuracy of his aim under difficult and dangerous conditions.
After the trial Taylor said the ammunition was indeed old and added the new information that the perp had soiled his pants as he crawled out the door.
“I would have had an even worse mess to clean up if it had gone through his forehead,” Taylor said. “It was good for both of us that it didn’t.”
Meanwhile, back in Knox County, the word is out: Don’t go messing with Smokey Taylor. He just bought a whole bunch of fresh ammo.
Tribune Editor Bill Fishburne is a member of the Larry Thorne Chapter XXXIII of the Special Forces Association.
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That looks like a Squadron Books illustration there. Those are great guides for painting miniatures and dioramas!
January 24th, 2008 at 10:26 pmThis guy is awesome! An 80 year old takes it cool and hits a guy square between the eyes…with a .22. That is impressive. Kinda reminds me of the case of another vet who ripped an intruder to pieces with a Thompson (fully-automatic). That vet didn’t fare nearly so well - especially since they couldn’t stitch both halves of the intruder back together again.
January 24th, 2008 at 10:46 pmGreat story…22 cal bounced off his forehead .. old round means the powder is weak creating poor velocity.
Court martial “failing to use a weapon of sufficient caliber”
January 24th, 2008 at 10:58 pmLOL
Bashman
That is a great story!
I’m a retired Police Officer and firearms instructor for my Department. When I took over as the Chief Firearms Instructor, I would bring our Officers right off the street at the end of their shift to the firing line. Once on the firing line, the Officers would fire the weapon and ammunition carried while on duty. For every squad I brought to the line, at least one Officers weapon did not fire or had a serious malfunction. Some fired once, had a quiet pop of the primer, or did not fire at all. A couple problems were broken firing pins, but most were caused by Officers getting lazy, soaking their pistols with “WD40”. The oil will soak into the primers and you know the rest. Once the word got out, Officers started taking better care of their weapons and ammunition.
I’m sure (Smokey) Taylor’s fellow Green Beret Friends also made sure they had fresh ammunition after this incident!
January 24th, 2008 at 11:15 pmhttp://www.ashevilletribune.com/
seems to be a couple weeklies, not much online
January 25th, 2008 at 12:37 amAs it was determined, at least he didn’t have to clean up the mess. There’s a positive side to these things. I wish I could have attended the proceedings.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:41 amActually it looks like an Osprey book illustration to me. Great story BTW.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:02 amTHIS is but one example as to why I love our veterans so much! God bless ‘em all and thank each and every one for their service to our country.
January 25th, 2008 at 4:38 amWay to go Smokey!
January 25th, 2008 at 6:10 amhttp://www.theodoresworld.net/archives/2008/01/post_24.html
http://www.libertypost.org/cgi-bin/readart.cgi?ArtNum=214156
January 25th, 2008 at 6:15 amMan, I love that story! My choice is a .45 to store in the nightstand drawer. My neighbors will need to learn how to duck.
January 25th, 2008 at 6:46 amIs that a “grease gun” I see among the weapons? I thought those had gone out with WW2.
January 25th, 2008 at 8:24 amThe Special Forces Association he belongs to can be found here - http://chapterxxxiii.sfsarge.com/
If you clink on the membership roster link and scroll down to the T’s, you will find his named listed there. It looks legit.
Great story, I’ll share it with the many family and soldier buddies I have.
January 25th, 2008 at 10:36 amDitto to what you all said. Fucking squared away member of the “old breed” eh? Passing that story on for sure.
January 25th, 2008 at 2:51 pmMy kind of man. If someone is crazy enough to break into my house, I am crazy enough to shoot him. I think my 25 or 38 will crack that hard head. I flew a lot of those guys in RVN up North of Ple Ku. The LRRP Teams were a pleasure to work with. Bikini Red, 170th AHC.(Mar 67-68)
January 27th, 2008 at 10:43 amI got the same article today via my email.
Of course, being the cynical type that I am, I started dinging into it, and sadly…. I’m not buying it as a real story.
I can’t find one reference to it from a real and reliable news source. I did, however, find the Tribune Editor Bill Fishburne who was cited. His site, http://www.ashevilletribune.com is full of stories about how jet contrails are actually a plot by the government to secretly release drugs into the air to keep the population docile.
The site that people posted to support the story, http://chapterxxxiii.sfsarge.com/, also seems to be a hoax. It claims a copyright date of 1994 (there wasn’t much to the net back then, and you used lynx to get to it) but a whois of the domain shows the following:
Creation Date: 31-Jul-2007
Expiration Date: 31-Jul-2008
So… it’s totally bogus. All that aside, it’s still a funny story.
February 3rd, 2008 at 6:43 amHey Pat:
Someone else note the http://www.theodoresworld.net/archives/2008/01/post_24.html
February 5th, 2008 at 2:00 pmpage AND it also has a photo of said court martialed G.B…